Letter of the Day: A dangerous eraser

Signe cartoonSIGN23eTrayvon Martin

July 22, 2013, 7:46PM

07/22/2013

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EDITOR: One fundamental truth is that any society that allows a man to go free after initiating a fight with and then shooting an innocent and scared boy, legally walking home, has deep problems.

Anyone who suggests that race was not the basis of profiling and the direct cause of the confrontation is, I believe, delusional. But that is not the point. Would we feel better if the victim was white and George Zimmerman was acquitted? Obviously not, since then we would have to worry continuously about white kids being murdered if they "held their ground" and defended themselves against an armed aggressor.

We would also be forced to consider the implications of our love for unregulated gun ownership and the right to carry a concealed weapon. Would Trayvon Martin have continued a fistfight had he known that his assailant was carrying a gun in a state that allows the aggressor to shoot to kill as soon as he feared bodily harm?

Would this result have passed for justice even under the conditions of our Wild West and frontier days?